FNC: Fair and Balanced?

Is the Fox News Channel really as "fair and balanced" as they claim to be?

We report. You decide.

Bill O'Reilly showed again this evening that he is far from fair and balanced when he interviewed his Monday night regulars Kirsten Powers and Michelle Malkin about Paris Hilton's imminent release from prison, probably within the next 12 hours (it is 6:45 PM PDT on Mon., June 25th).

We saw the same old clips of Paris Hilton wearing very little as she slithered around a sudsy black automobile in her infamous Carl's Junior commercial. And, we saw the same old clips of Paris Hilton posing for cameras over and over again while O'Reilly, Powers, and Malkin talked in the background.

Powers (right photo) and Malkin (left photo) displayed their good sense by knocking Paris Hilton out of left field, while O'Reilly dragged out the story, again showing more clips of Hilton wearing very little. Thank God Powers and Malkin were there to balance O'Reilly's dive into the mire of bad taste. In fairness to O'Reilly, his producer probably made him take the dive.

Fox News also displayed bad taste when they reported on Anna Nicole Smith earlier this year after her death and last year when her son died. Over and over and over again, Fox News showed one clip after another of Anna Nicole bulging our of her dress or bathing suit, over and over and over, ad nauseum....

Now don't get me wrong. I have been watching Bill O'Reilly for years. His show is one of the best on television. But is it really "fair and balanced?"

We report. You decide.

On the "fair-and-balanced" scale from one to ten, I'd give Bill a score of 8.3.

1. Cows

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that our government can track a cow born in Canada almost three years ago, right to the stall where she sleeps in the state of Washington? And, they tracked her calves to their stalls, but they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around our country. Maybe we should give each illegal alien a cow.

2. The Constitution

They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it's worked for over 200 years and we're not using it anymore.

3. The Ten Commandments

The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse....

You cannot post "Thou Shalt Not Steal," "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery" and "Thou Shall Not Lie" in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians -- it creates a hostile work environment.

This, That, and the Other Thing

I spent the past couple of days working on the Tuxedo Junction Newsletter for June. I issue it on the 15th of each month to avoid the deluge of online publications that seems to happen around the 1st of each month.

Today, I can relax. Not that I don't have plenty of things to do. But everything can wait. It's a good day for walking, maybe along the beach, and watching old movies on TV.

Last night, I watched part of one of Clint Eastwood's spaghetti westerns. As one who saw many, many westerns on Saturday afternoons at the Roxy, our neigborhood theater in Berwyn, Ill., where I grew up in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Clint Eastwood's westerns seem to be a few notches above the rest.

Ironically, I grew tired of westerns in the mid-1950s when I began going out with girls. And in the late 1950s, when so many TV shows were westerns, I really got sick of them.

But Clint Eastwood's western, dubbed "spaghetti westerns," because they were made in Italy or Spain, intrigued me. I became a fan of his and have remained so over the years. I think I have seen every Clint Eastwood film.

"Play Misty for Me," which came out in 1971, is one of my favorite movies of all time. Clint plays a jazz deejay in the Moneterey-Carmel area, one of the most beautiful places on earth. I haven't been up there for a long, long time. Maybe I'll go back this year. Jessica Walters was as scary as hell in that film. Donna Mills played Clint's girlfriend. I think it was her first film. I remembered Jessica Walters from "The Group." Every time I have seen her in films since "Play Misty for Me," she has scared the hell our of me just thinking about her "Misty" character.

I know, they're only movies....

Now its getting close to 11 a.m., so I think I'll watch the news for a few minutes and then catch a movie on TCM.